Why Jennifer Lawrence Got "Really, Really Drunk" Before Kissing Co-Star Chris Pratt
They played love interests in 2016's Passengers.
In the 2016 sci-fi movie Passengers, Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt play strangers traveling on a spaceship who fall in love when their sleep pods are opened 90 years before they reach their destination. The actors were tasked with filming a sex scene for the movie, which apparently led to some serious anxiety for Lawrence. In fact, she admitted later that she had to get drunk on set before she kissed Pratt.
On top of that, the onscreen pairing of Pratt and Lawrence ended up becoming tabloid fodder, to a point where she had to address rumors about their IRL relationship. Read on to learn more.
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Lawrence said she got drunk for their love scene.
Lawrence opened up about filming the Passengers love scene when she took part in the 2015 Hollywood Reporter Actress Roundtable.
"I had my first real sex scene a couple weeks ago, and it was really bizarre. It was really weird," she said. Asked how she prepared, Lawrence responded, "I got really, really drunk. But then that led to more anxiety when I got home because I was like, 'What have I done? I don't know.' And he was married. And it was going to be my first time kissing a married man, and guilt is the worst feeling in your stomach."
The actor continued, "I knew it was my job, but I couldn't tell my stomach that. So I called my mom, and I was like, 'Will you just tell me it's OK?' It was just very vulnerable. And you don't know what's too much. You want to do it real, you want everything to be real, but then … That was the most vulnerable I've ever been."
She was also stressed out by the amount of people on set.
In an interview with E! News, Lawrence noted that her scene partner himself was not the problem.
"It was just nerve-racking," she said. "It's not even about your co-star, because Pratt is so wonderful and lovely … My nerves weren't about him … It's about everybody you work with. It's like all of the cameramen, all of the producers, the directors. You come to work and all of the people that you work with are watching and listening, and you're like, 'Do I make sounds?' My biggest fear was that somebody was going to, like, burst on set and be like, 'Whoa whoa whoa! Calm down!'"
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Pratt said they became "fast friends."
Despite Lawrence's fears about the sex scene, the two actors got along well.
"As we were working together in Atlanta, we just became fast friends, and we bonded over a mutual love of Dumb and Dumber," Pratt told MTV. "Just like jokes and life."
He was also aware of how she felt going into the love scene and joined her in trying to relieve the stress.
"Aside from doing a great job and telling a good story, your primary goal is to make the other person comfortable," he explained. "And she wanted to have some wine, so we did, and that was nice."
There were rumors they had an affair.
At the time that Passengers was shot, Pratt was still married to Anna Faris. Despite this—and Pratt and Lawrence speaking publicly about their friendship, rumors circulated that the two co-stars had an affair on set. The gossip persisted well after the film came out and gained fuel when Pratt and Faris announced their separation. Passengers hit theaters in December 2016; the former couple shared that they were splitting up in August 2017.
In February 2018, the U.K.'s KISS asked Lawrence to address rumors she'd heard about herself. "I never had an affair with Chris Pratt on Passengers," she said. "They got a divorce, like, two years later and everybody was like, 'Jennifer Lawrence!' And I was like, 'What the… I'm in Montreal two years later.'"
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Faris wrote about the rumors in her memoir.
Faris shared her side of things in her October 2017 memoir.
"I'd always taken pride in our relationship, and the coverage, even though it was just false rumors, was making me feel insecure," Faris wrote in Unqualified (via Harper's Bazaar). "Jennifer and I really are friendly, and she was apologetic even though she didn't need to be, because she hadn't done anything wrong. She's awesome, but of course it's hurtful and also embarrassing when people are saying your husband is cheating on you—even if it's patently untrue. You still feel, and look, like a fool. But that's something I have had to learn to handle in stride."
